In Saudi Brokered Deal, Yemen President Is Next To Offer To Step Down In Exchange For Immunity

The WSJ reports that another very likely casualty of the not so velvet revolution in MENA, and of increasingly heated (and more desperate) backdoor deals with Saudi Arabia the UAE, is Yemen's president Ali Abdullah Saleh who has accepted "a political deal brokered by neighboring
Arab countries that would have him step down from power after 30 days
in exchange for immunity for himself and his close relatives, according
to a presidential aide." Let's not forget that Gadaffi also offered to step down (or was rumored in one of the frail attempts to take down oil before the big guns, read Goldman, had to step in with their "research") - a gambit which led to just more massacres of innocent civilians. And since Al Qaeda is likely the biggest loser in such a deal, we don't expect this plan to be pulled off without a lot off fireworks.

The apparent softening of the longtime ruler's recalcitrant stance that he would remain in power until the end of his term in 2013 comes after a burst of arm-twisting and backroom diplomacy by Yemen's close allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It renews the possibility that the volatile country could see a handover of power before the volatile country descends into widespread violence, but it is unclear whether key groups who comprise the backbone of Yemen's opposition movement would accept the controversial clause of immunity for the man who has ruled Yemen for 32 years.

Yemen's key Arab allies and the U.S. have grown increasingly worried that the three-month political standoff has reversed gains made by American and Yemeni forces to weaken and destroy the entrenched Al Qaeda networks inside Yemen. In recent weeks, as protests against the president have gained traction, as many as half of the country's U.S.-trained counter-terrorism forces, which are commanded by President Saleh's son and nephews, have left their posts in al Qaeda-infested areas of the country to help defend the leader's official residence in the capital San'a.

Last week's burst of lobbying by Gulf officials, led by Saudi Arabia, sent the message to embattled President Saleh that he had lost the backing of his neighbors, but that they would ensure he received a dignified exit from office, according to two Arab diplomats familiar with the negotiations conducted over the last week.

"President Saleh welcomed the proposal and has accepted it," presidential aide Tariq Shami told The Wall Street Journal. "Though President Saleh has constitutional rights to stay in power, he is willing to leave office willingly."

To us, the only actual news here is that Saudi Arabia is probably more concerned than ever with increasing regional destabilization, and will now aggressively intervene (pari passu with the US) and get its way, in the modelling of the "sovereign" map of the Gulf. As always, in geopolitics every action tends to have an equal (if not stronger) and opposite reaction. We will find out what that ends up being quite soon.

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Faber has been right on a lot. But i guess his doom and gloom is not that popular at the moment.

Those FFT guys have been crushing the market latetly. I am a VIP member and love their technical analysis, but they just uploaded a FREE video of what they think is going to happen in the next few weeks to the S&P 500. Its well worth a watch!

Gadaffi never really offered to step down. It was a "hudna" Most in the west aren't familiar with the concept of "hudna". It is a Koranic reference to any strategic ploy which involves feigning peace, settlement or truce while using that time to re-arm, re-group and prepare a new offensive. When Gadaffi offered to step-down -- only the Western media fell for it. Al Jazeera was rightfully suspect. And look what happened.

The term "hudna" comes from Mohammed's conquest of Mecca -- in which he made a truce with city state only to come back and massacre most of the city with his army. (Which is when he converted the Temple of the Moon Cult into the Holy Q'aba, setting a long Islamic trend of building mosques on top of, or nearby conquered cathedrals, buddhist/hindu temples, the WTC, etc... but that's another story).

Never take a public offer of "peace" for face-value in the Arab world. Hudna's are not only 'not-deceitful', they are considered moral, justifiable and holy actions when they prevent the reach of outside (non-muslim) powers onto muslim soil.

Lying to infidels for gain is ingrained in Islamic culture from top to bottom. I knew a studio owner who had a lot of Muslim clients. After many bad experiences, his rule with Muslims became all cash in advance or the doors don't open. If he waited to be paid after the session was over, he never saw more than half the money he was owed and the Muslims would somehow rationalize being pissed at and violent toward him.

They really are insane pod-people from a non-parallel universe allowed onto Earth by an odd warp in the space-time continuum around 700 AD. If you are non-muslim, nothing they say or do around you may be trusted. Period.

"Pastor" Lindsey Williams is a white-shoe oils salesman who has one and only one story to tell and to sell. He was lucky with one prediction and now he will sell you a bunch of over-priced DVDs to tell you the rest of his bullshits.

Yemenis look down on their Saudi neighbours and their unsophisticated desert culture. They believe Yemen is the cradle of Arab civilisation and the birthplace of the Arabic language. They proudly claim Yemen to be the first country to convert to Islam and allude to a mosque in Sana whose construction Hazrat Ali reportedly supervised. Hence, they have little time for Saudi pretensions about being the font of Islam.

To complicate the situation they consider their neighbours effete, lazy, even cowardly and insufferably conceited. The al Houthi tribe of the (Shia) Zaidi sect have incessantly raided Saudi territories. Their links with the shias in the southern Saudi provinces of Najran and Jizan are strong and were they to emerge more powerful as a result of the current unrest in Yemen this would embolden the shia in Saudi Arabia’s oil rich Eastern Province bordering Bahrain to step up their agitation against Riyadh, backed possibly by Iran. Such a scenario deeply worries the Saudis as it would threaten Saudi Arabia and provide the use of Yemen as a base for staging attacks on the Kingdom. To make matters worse, armour and sophisticated Saudi weaponry is useless in the mountainous terrain of north Yemen where the al Houthis, like the Taliban, are masters of mountainous guerrilla warfare.

It is the shia north that Saudi Arabia is worried about in Yemen.Last year when they conducted a military raid against the Houthis the Saudi military got its ass kicked. So invading northern Yemen will be a quagmire for them. Yemen is about to become the Somalia of the Arab world. The House of Mud is crumbling and will collapse very soon.

You do not want to be up in the mountains, dodging drones and watching your logistical network get obliterated. If the rest of the world turns a blind eye to the termination of transport of foods and medicines into mountain redoubts, it is game over.

If your actions cause a significant spike in the price of the oil, no one is your friend. The world would not even know what you look like. In any event, do not cause "Dancing with the Stars" to be interupted with a fast moving news bulletin...

Not if you have horses, cattle, ranch with supplies. One area you are wrong about, in the true mountains, back woods and ranches, outsiders, if shtf will be the ones who have a rough time and lonely.

This class of folks are tired of all the self caused bs. We can make it on our own without all the shit that is caused by the dollar, yuan, trade wars, stupid fucking fighting, bombing, fig tree wars going on. Short of bombs dropping on our ass, alot of rural living will be just fine. We don't need 19.95 tomato hanger's to survive lol.

Be careful what you wish for if you did not grow up in these so called red neck area's folks. They don't play games with life and still know the meaning of friend's, family, neighbor's and land.

Excellent analysis. As I said elsewhere, it feels like the Saudi government is trying to stir conflict with Shia groups in order to deflect from domestic issues, as they have done before.

If oil production in Saudi starts going into a serious decline the anger that the leaders have squandered the wealth is going to rise. The bin Saud family are smart enough to realize that stirring up hatred of enemies is less dangerous to their regime than offering tokens of democracy. There seem strong parallels with Europe in the run up to the Great War..

Yemen is the back door to Saudi's "empty quarter" where all kinds of clandestine stuff has been taking place for years.They are probably more vulnerable to attack through the Empty Quarter than they are from Iran across the Gulf. That is why they are desperate to broker a deal they hope ( good luck) will keep a lid on in Yemen. My guess is that the lid is already off and the Saudi monarchy is doomed. Good riddance.

If the forty thousand strong army of Saudi princes fall...the US oil Oligarchy loses all...It'll be "OPEN Range" in the Oil patch. And China will be first in line with its credit status. Unlike US of Ponzi-A as a debt ridden currency devalued country.

So it'll be 'Run baby, run' time as in that immortal song of Cheryl Crow which begins..."She was born on the day Aldous Huxley died"...It still rings in my ears...but that's another story.

King Abdullah watched Mubarak get injected with haldol by the US, watching Yemen/Oman go the way of the dodo after a year of close US cadre, watching Q-daffy getting prepped for a JDAM suppository after the British spent 6 years rehabilitating him, watching Al-Khalifa get zero counterinsurgency support from the 5th fleet, watching George Clooney cut Sudan in half, watching Abdullah 2 in Jordan struggle for relevance and now Assad Jr is shooting his way out of 5 years of US renditions; watching all of this knowing that the US is working to bring some other Saudi reformer to the front stage and otherwise knife the Saudis..

The Saudis have been going to the Russians and Pakistan (for the bomb?) as an end run to maintain sovereignty. The question is; will Saudi go full retard on the whole Shia-Sunni regional conflict and size up Iran? That is the central question for Saudi survival under US hegemony.

$3 to bring oil to market. $200 target price. $7 pump price. That is a lot of oil money that has to be reinvested into Western banks. If that money stops flowing and is used to buy The Bomb, then you'll see some false flag to arrest and seize all things Saudi in the name of the global war on terrorism. If Obama doesn't have the balls to do it, surely Hillary does.

Maybe the Gregorian calendar is off my 1 year and 2011 is really 2012 for that Mayan calendar thing. Pass the pop corn.